Hinda Cohen - a powerful message in tiny shoes
1/n
Tzipporah (née Barka) and Dov Cohen lived in Kovno. Their first child died at birth before the war.
With the German invasion of Lithuania, the couple tried unsuccessfully to escape to Soviet territory, and eventually found 2/n themselves back home in Kovno. On 18 January 1942, about 6 months after their relocation to the Kovno ghetto, Tzipporah and Dov had a baby girl. They named her Hinda, after Tzipporah’s mother. In late November 1943,

Hinda's parents: Tzipporah and Dov

Wilhelm Hosenfeld, savior of "The Pianist", Wladyslaw Szpilman
🧵
Although Hosenfeld had already joined the NSDAP in 1935, he soon lost his illusions about the regime and was appalled by the crimes against Poles and Jews that he witnessed. Throughout his military service, he kept a diary in which he expressed his feelings. The texts survived as he regularly sent the notebooks home. In his notes, Hosenfeld emphasized his growing outrage at the oppression of the Poles by the regime, the persecution of the Polish clergy, the mistreatment of the Jews and,

Transport XXI from Dossin Barracks, Belgium to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 31 July, 1942
1/n
On July 31, 1943 Giza, born Gitel Wachspress in Tarnow, together with her lover David Weissblum, a furrier, was put on transport XXI to Auschwitz.
The life of this courageous couple became a 2/n symbol of resistance and courage during dark times. After their flight to Belgium in July 1939, they later had to flee to France during the German invasion. When they returned to Antwerp in 1940, they discovered that their house had been looted.

1/n "Aktion T4", the Nazi euthanasia program

T4 Program, Nazi German effort—framed as a euthanasia program—to kill incurably ill, physically or mentally disabled, emotionally distraught, and elderly 2/n people. Adolf Hitler initiated the program in 1939, and, while it was officially discontinued in 1941, killings continued covertly until the military defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.
Within a few months the T4 Program—named for the Chancellery offices that directed it from the

German camp brothels in World War II
1/n
In World War II, Nazi Germany established brothels in the concentration camps (Lagerbordelle) to create an incentive for prisoners to collaborate, although these institutions were used mostly by Kapos, 2/n functionaries and the criminal elements, because regular inmates, penniless and emaciated, were usually too debilitated and wary of exposure to SS schemes. In the end, the camp brothels did not not produce any noticeable increase in the prisoners' work productivity

Camp Amersfoort - The Netherlands
1/n
During the Second World War, the Nazis used Camp Amersfoort as a concentration camp. During the war years, approximately 40,000 people were held captive in the camp for a short or longer period of time. Hundreds of them died in the camp.
2/n Camp Amersfoort was originally intended as a transit camp, where prisoners could be temporarily housed before deportation to Germany. But the camp also served as a punishment- and labor camp. A total of 20,200 prisoners were transported from Amersfoort to camps in Germany.

Lisette Moru
"The Smile from Auschwitz"
1/n
Marie-Louise Pierrette Moru, known as Lisette, was born on July 27, 1925. Her father, Joseph Moru, worked in the shipyard in nearby Lorient. Her mother, Suzanne Gahinet was a fish trader. Lisette was the eldest of three children. 2/n A rebel at heart, Lisette couldn’t stand the Occupation. She wore a Cross of Lorraine – the symbol of Free France – under her jacket collar. She’d take any opportunity she could to thumb her nose behind a German soldier’s back – she wasn’t shy; she’d do it in full view.

From Helga Weiss’ diary (14)
She turns 95 today 💐
1/n
"It’s getting light out. Where are we now? We’ve just passed through a station. Katowice. My God, that’s the Polish border. Where are they taking us? Could it be to Birkenau? But we heard it had been wound up, that transports 2/n weren’t going there anymore. So where are we headed? Are our men there? If so, then it doesn’t matter where we go, so long as we stay together. We’ve been traveling for 24 hours. Where, only God knows. We’re all starting to get nervous. People were saying all sorts of things;

@AuschwitzMuseum 1/n The process of taking assets began with Aryanization of Jewish property in the 1930s; followed by the looting of real, personal, intellectual, and cultural property throughout the war; and the looting of gold from the central banks of occupied countries. The process even @AuschwitzMuseum 2/n involved the taking the gold filings, rings, and other valuables of those murdered in the Final Solution. Art was a favorite target of the Nazis and the Nazis looted some 600,000 pieces. Many items were subsequently sold to raise funds to support the Nazi war machine.

Letter to God
Liliane Gerenstein, 11 in April 1944
1/n
A few days before the descent to the children's home in Izieu, little Liliane Gerenstein, aged eleven, wrote a poignant letter to God. The letter was found in the establishment after the children's arrest. 2/n "God ? How good you are, how nice you are and if you had to count the number of kindnesses and kindnesses you have given us, it would never end… God? You are in charge. It is you who are justice, it is you who reward the good and punish the wicked. God ?

Liliane & Maurice

The Hunger Winter of 1944-1945:
Hunger and cold in the Netherlands
1/n
The liberation of the southern part of the Netherlands in the autumn of 1944 has dire consequences for the occupied western part of the Netherlands. The Dutch government in London calls for a major strike in 2/n rail transport to support Operation Market Garden on 17 September 1944. 30,000 railway employees are on strike. The trains don't run anymore until the end of the war. But as a punitive measure, the German occupiers blocked food transports to the provinces of North and South

Thread
Spring of 1938: 19-year-old Hilda Zigman worked part-time in the women's fashion store Meyer on Blindengasse in Vienna as part of her fashion design studies. Not only did she have to give up her studies because of the Nazi persecution;
She also suffered the humiliation of being forced to wash the sidewalk in front of the Jewish shop when the Nazis targeted it. As the situation worsened, Hilda and her boyfriend Hans Sturm,

From left: Hilda, Serina and Hans Zigman, with an unidentified friend, Vienna, ca. 1936

Antwerp Hands, Brabo and the persecution of the Jews
1/n
To this day, the Antwerp Hands cookies are the most famous tourist souvenir of the city of Antwerp. 'Het Handje' was launched in 1934 by Jewish Jos Hakker and the Antwerp Master Pastry Bakers Association. 2/n With the shape of the cookie, the bakers referred to the medieval Brabo saga. But there is more than one history behind the cookie. Here we unravel the biography of the cookie and its inventor.

#OTD, November 1, 1941, BELZEC labor camp was transformed into an extermination camp, with gruesome consequences
1/n
The deported Jews first came into contact with the SS after being delivered to the arrival area. They were stunned and scared. Anyone who showed annoyance or
2/n protested was taken by the guards to the execution site in Camp II, where they were shot in the neck with a small caliber pistol. The SS tried to calm the deportees with words.
Camp commander Christian Wirth welcomed the new arrivals through a loudspeaker saying:

1/n Truus Wijsmuller (1896-1978)
was an ‘ordinary’ woman, who came into action when the lives of Jewish children were no longer protected and safe in many European countries after the Night of Broken Glass ('Kristall Nacht') on November 9/10, 1938. She personally negotiated with 2/n the Germans, met with Adolf Eichmann in Vienna and when he ‘offered’ her to organise a transport in a few days, gathering 600 Jewish children – without their parents – to leave Germany by train, she surprised him by indeed getting almost that big of a group together to be

George Kadish
1/n
born Zvi (Hirsh) Kadushin (1910 – September 1997), was a Lithuanian Jewish photographer who documented life in the Kovno Ghetto during the Holocaust, the period of the Nazi German genocide against Jews. 2/n The Kovno ghetto had 2 parts, called the "small" and "large" ghetto. The Germans destroyed the small ghetto on October 4, 1941, and killed almost all of its inhabitants at the Ninth Fort. Later that same month, on October 29, 1941,

"The body is gone"

The #Righteous during World War Two

Rome: The Doctors At Fatebenefratelli Hospital Who Invented “Syndrome K”

In October 1943, a terrifying new disease suddenly appeared in Nazi-occupied Rome. Italian doctors claimed that the so-called “Syndrome K” was highly contagious and dangerous. But, in fact, it was all a ruse. A trio of doctors — Vittorio Sacerdoti, Giovanni Borromeo, and Adriano Ossicini — invented the disease to save Jews in Italy. When Jews came to Fatebenefratelli Hospital seeking a safe haven from the Nazis, the doctors

Defiance: The Bielski Partisans
1/n
The Bielski partisans were a unit of Jewish partisans who rescued Jews from extermination and fought the German occupiers and their collaborators around Novogrudok and Lida in German-occupied Poland (now 2/n western Belarus). The partisan unit was named after the Bielskis, a family of Polish Jews who organized and led the community.
The Bielski partisans spent more than 2 years living in the forest. By the end of the war they numbered as many

Photo: the Bielski brothers

Anna Essinger was born on 15 September 1879 in Ulm, Germany to Fanny and Leopold Essinger, a non-observant Jewish couple. She was the oldest of nine children.

1/n
She smuggled her entire school out of Nazi Germany in 1933, and made her school-in-exile in England a haven for
2/n refugees and displaced children before and after the war. When Hitler came into power, Essinger quietly boycotted the Nazi Regime. When all buildings were required to fly the Nazi flag for Hitler’s birthday, Essinger took the children on a day trip so that they would not have

Excerpts from the Theresienstadt Diary of Alice Ehrmann
1/n
October 20, 1944 Orders. The last section heads (Elbert, Klapp, Gonda Redlich) 80 percent of the doctors, complete cripples, deathly tuberculosis, deathly ill children without their parents; mothers of deathly ill
2/n children left behind. It is too terrible to even feel unhappy. Father left fortress (about) 14 days ago; destination unknown. Mother without regular signs of life-laundry--is she as incapable of remembering as we? Or has her grieving taken another direction-who knows....

Born in Auschwitz - Angela Orosz
1/n
Her mother Velska was three months pregnant and when she was rounded up by the Nazis and taken to the camp. When she and her husband arrived in May 1944, she along with the Jewish people were immediately separated by gender. 2/n The ramp they arrived on was the last time Velska saw him.
Orosz said she was constantly reminded of the word “Auschwitz” growing up.
“I knew always Auschwitz.

Velska and her husband arrived in Auschwitz in 1944